In Search Of The 19th Hole Along The World’s Longest Golf Course
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Australia is vast, beyond description.
Growing up in rural Western Australia and having spent the majority of my early childhood in the back of an old Land Cruiser I am no stranger to a sprawling salt-flat or secluded beach but being offered the opportunity to drive across the Nullarbor Plain was something I felt I owed to my younger self. Before music, I played golf competitively, which meant since the age of fifteen, I travelled quite a lot for National and interstate tournaments. That paired with a hard left turn into music after high school has led me to a life of almost constant travelling. I’ve racked up millions of miles but the gleaming majority of that time on the road has been quite literally been spent ‘on the road.’ Driving, whether for work or in my downtime, has always had a strange, meditative effect on me. Whether you’re out there solo or travelling with someone, there’s always time for a bit of reflection. I’ve always thought the seeming monotony of a long drive allows your conscious mind to almost sit in its own sort of cruise control whilst the subconscious mind wanders. Driving also evokes the notion of ‘taking the long way.’ Learning to appreciate journeys and processes and stopping to smell the roses, not that there were many roses this time around.
Realistically my journey back home to Perth began in London. When you wave goodbye to your golf bag at the behemoth that is London’s Heathrow Airport, to then pick them up over twenty-seven hours later, off the twenty-foot conveyor belt in the little town of Port Lincoln, South Australia, it’s a moment for pause. I started thinking about the simplicity of what we were about to do. No shuttles, revolving airlock doors, PA systems telling you what and when things are supposed to happen, just 2300 kilometres of road. Andrew Peters and I met up at LAX on my way through and we both looked forward to the idea of taking a little break from the noise of New York and Los Angeles. We’d met on the golf course before, but other than that, we didn’t really know one another, which is always a bit of a crap shoot. Take it from me: getting out on the road with anyone is a bit of a make-or-break. They could be your closest bandmate, best friend, spouse or family member, but you have to figure out pretty quickly how to spend at least eight hours a day picking music, sharing snacks, timing bathroom breaks and pacing conversation; otherwise, things can get real awkward. Luckily, Andrew and I have a mutual love of Tim Tams and Paul Simon, which I think is a pretty good place to start.
A friend of mine had told me about the famed ‘longest golf course in the world,’ which stretches the whole length of the Nullarbor Plain, requiring you to stop every 100 kilometres or so to play a hole. So off we took. Ceduna was the first stop where you retrieve your scorecards, and it’s also home to the first two holes of the Nullarbor Links, which required me to reacclimatise myself with the art of raking sand greens. I hadn’t done it since I played at the WA SA friend of mine had told me about the famed ‘longest golf course in the world,’ which stretches the whole length of the Nullarbor Plain, requiring you to stop every hundred kilometres or so to play a hole. So off we took. Ceduna was the first stop where you retrieve your scorecards, and it’s also home to the first two holes of the Nullarbor Links, requiring me to reacclimate myself with the art of raking sand greens. I hadn’t done it since I played at the WA Sand Greens Championship in Beverly as a teenager, but it’s really fun and messy. You have to rake a clear path between you and the hole, ensuring you’ve raked the right pace and break.
After a couple of hours on the highway, we headed towards Fowlers Bay. It’s a different feel when you’re out in the middle of Australia, unlike Europe or the United States, you really feel the distance. Nothing is as built up around you, and the vastness makes you feel so small. You begin to notice little things like the types of trees and how the earthy shoulders on either side of the road change to a white coastal sandy colour the further along you travel, which was exactly where we were heading. As the sun set, we pulled down a long driveway beside a runway for the Royal Flying Doctors Service and over the cattle gates to the Coorabie Farm. We were done driving for the day and at the invitation of our hosts Poggie and Deb, we smashed a few balls with a couple of tins before it got dark.
The farmstead was beautiful, simple and quintessentially Australian with local memorabilia paired with milestones how of the farm has changed over the last one hundred years. There was a guitar made of driftwood, a recycling bin with AFL goal posts and a giant tin of Milo in the kitchen. It had been a bone shaking few days of travel to get here but I can’t describe the peace I felt sinking into my chair as we shared couple of beers and a home made stew, in front of an open fire on a moonless night. It was so dark you could see the edge of the Milky Way. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been travelling forever. I’ve been so lucky to have witnessed beautiful vistas, heard incredible sounds and walked some hallowed paths, but the more I travel I find myself doing it for the people I might meet it and has never rung truer than my evening spent in Coorabie. I felt truly grateful.
Poggie and Deb’s families have been in Fowlers for generations, so, under their advice, we headed out to the coast and ventured off-road. From the tops of the dunes, you can make out the blowholes of migrating whales. I still find it amazing that in Australia, you can be in a dense wood of eucalyptus and then three minutes later, there’s a pure white sand beach with crystal water in front of you with no one around for kilometres.
Down from the dunes and through the middle of some incredible pink coloured lakes, we were back on the highway and were driving for about an hour until we saw a sign that read ‘Wombat Hole’ and someone walking back to their car with a golf club and figured we were in the right place. Driving up a red dirt road, we saw a little astro turf tee box and pointed in the direction of a thin stretch of cleared desert shrubs and what turned out to be a fairway and six hundred meters away was a little waving flag, this was the first of the natural desert golf. It was a steep learning curve, but keeping the ball in play was necessary. If you miss the fairway, there’s little chance you’re finding that thing. I also didn’t expect the greens to be rock hard and lightning fast, so I had to develop a technique of kind of laying up where I could spin the ball, which is equally as frustrating and fulfilling when you got it right. I made a bogey but wasn’t too fussed as I blasted my third shot over the green.
We hopped back in the car, and as we kept going, we began to notice the trees thinning out and growing ever shorter. Before we knew it, we came over a rise, and they were gone. It’s eerie when you first see it, an uninterrupted horizon for miles and miles, but then when you take in the size of the sky, it gives you this strange excitement like you’re going where no one has gone.
Another hour or so down the road, I saw the far-off shimmer at the base of a lone cell tower, which was a relief. The repeating downloaded playlist on my phone was getting a little old (Nullarbor hack #1 download music before you leave). We had arrived at the famed Nullarbor Roadhouse. It’s quaint and seems a little stuck in time, but I loved it. A painted mural of Australian legends is in the front bar, and the giant whale sculpture is next to where you fill up gas. The old sign is iconic. After a long day, we downed a burger and got to sit out and watch one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen, and again I cannot overstate the beauty of the night sky in the desert.
The next day was going to be a big haul, so we got up early to play the next hole, which was behind the roadhouse. Dawn in the desert was as stunning as dusk, everything still except for the rumbling tyres of road trains every so often. The aptly named Dingo’s Den was another extremely long hole. I putted out to a barking kelpie and some dreary-eyed fellow Nullarbor commuters, and we headed south. As you approach the bite, you know what it will look like from all the tourism pictures, but what you don’t prepare yourself is how it makes you feel. The desert ends, you’re standing on the edge of a seventy-metre cliff, and there’s nothing between you and Antarctica. It’s surreal and quite literally feels like the bottom of the world.
As you reach the end of the plain, more trees begin to materialise, as does the back nine of the Nullarbor Links. Before WA, you hit the 90-mile stretch, which is arguably the straightest road in the world. Imagine not moving your steering wheel an inch for two hours at 100km/ph.
Every hole along the way has a different schtick; there are giant windmills and kangaroos, and some timeless little motels stop next to most of them. The golf game was average, but the quality of the post-round company was as all-time. It was so nice to sit in those roadhouses and hear where people were coming from and why, talking to truck drivers, curious as to why I was wearing golf shoes in the front bar. (Nullarbor Hack #2: truck drivers know every break, on every pool table, in every roadhouse) As we passed Eucla, things felt a little more familiar. Western Australia has a distinct feel, with patches of bushfire-torn Jarrah forests and deep red dirt. As the frequency of the trucks began to increase, I could feel the trip coming to an end. Kalgoorlie was quickly approaching, as were the final two holes of the Nullarbor links and the end of our journey. It’s a fun way to finish, with pristine fairways and lightning greens cut out of the deep red clay.
I felt like it went by so quickly, but we were out there for a week, driving 2300 kilometres and playing eighteen holes of golf. Exhausted and thirsty, we were all golfed out and had more than a couple before heading back to Perth the next day. The scenery and the conversations were my highlights, but I guess that’s golf for me. It’s a game breaks down a seven kilometre walk enough that you might get to know yourself and the people you’re out there with a little better or, in this case, a beautiful part of our country. See you at the 19th hole for a Coopers.
“The Beers & Bogeys Nullarbor Tour” brought to you by Coopers. Watch episodes of this three-part series on all Coopers social channels from October 2nd.
